The Reality of Wild Horse Roundups

The Reality of Wild HorseRoundups

Because the BLM sets unnaturally low population limits for wild horses to maximize public land available for private, taxpayer-subsidizedlivestockgrazing, they opt to drive thousands of wild horses from their homes and into incarceration each year.

The Terrifying Reality

Have you ever heard a helicopter circling overhead? Even at a distance, the steady thunder of the blades incites a primal fear. It's a sound well known in war zones. Stand within yards of the landing zone, and you are overcome by the brute force of the machine as blasts of wind and overpowering noise fill the air.

Now, imagine not knowing what a helicopter is. You live peacefully in the high desert – a prey animal with acute senses. Then all at once, inexplicably, a relentless creature in the sky stalks, chases, and pursues you as you stumble through the landscape in terror.

In every roundup, terrified horses are separated from their family groups, loaded onto trailers, and trucked to holding. Anxious mares call out to their foals and stallions injure themselves trying to defend or reunite with their families. Foals drop from exhaustion and often die in holding. Some horses are killed or injured. Of those, a few are regularly euthanized due to injuries incurred during the roundup.

Science Says Mass Roundups Are Counter-Productive

Mass removals act as a catalyst for a phenomenon called compensatory reproduction. Essentially, after a herd's population unnaturally plunges due to a roundup, biology dictates that birth rates will increase. The National Academy of Science states that,

The Roundup Result: Mass Incarceration

More than 60,000 wild horses are currently stockpiled in long-term holding facilities across the country with no place to go. As more and moremustangsare piled into captivity, the pressure to sell them for slaughter grows. The lives of tens of thousands of these innocent and iconic animals are at stake.

Taxpayers Foot the Bill

Needlessly warehousing healthymustangscosts tens of millions of dollars annually for feed and maintain their meager corrals. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

There is a Solution

If overpopulation were an actual problem for wild horses on public lands, herd numbers could be managed with humane, cost-effective fertility control programs using protocol from our Virginia Range program.

• Learn more about our fertility control program on Nevada's historic Virginia Range.
• More about solutions, here.